Health care technology management and innovation advice for CIOs

Date: Aug 01, 2012

Cathy Bruno dove headfirst into the world of cloud computing,
mobility
and analytics
in her role as vice president and CIO at Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems. Her efforts haven't been
in vain: In addition to improving
patient care, Bruno is the co-winner of the 2012 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Innovators award in
recognition of her award-winning approach to health care technology
management.

In this video interview, filmed at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium in Cambridge, Mass., Bruno talks
with SearchCIO.com Executive Editor Chris Gonsalves about the hospital group's groundbreaking data-sharing
initiatives and its ongoing efforts
to improve public health through innovations in mobility
and analytics.

What is the driving force behind IT initiatives and projects? How do they work, and why do
it?

Cathy Bruno: The driving force behind the projects at Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems is
really a vision of the leadership to provide the highest quality care that we can provide and the
highest amount of safety we can provide for our patients -- and they see the electronic
health record as the way to achieve that. We see that there is so much information in the world
that physicians can't keep up with it anymore. So, what we want to do is put systems in place so
that we have alerts and reminders. We can use a whole-team approach, in that the information
connects that team in the decision-making process so that we can improve safety and quality in our
organization.

Cloud is having, and will have, a major impact on patient
records and provider collaboration. Where are you with your cloud
strategy, and where do you expect to be over the next year or so?

Bruno: Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems was ahead of its time in that we already, several
years ago, outsourced our
processing for our electronic-health-record
and business systems to vendors who are doing that in a robust, repeatable and high-volume way, so
that we are focusing our efforts working with our clinicians to make sure they have the types of
tools they need to take care of our patients. We leave the processing work to vendors that are
excellent at that.

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